Browsing Research articles (Dept of Languages & Social Sciences Education) by Title
Now showing items 1-20 of 31
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Jankie, D. (National Council of Teachers of English, http://www.ncte.org/, December NaN, 1990)[more][less]
Abstract: Suggests using Mtutuzeli Matshoba's "Call Me Not a Man" as the central text in a unit on oppression to help students understand and make them better able to respond to oppression. Provides key questions for structuring the unit to help students consider aspects of oppression that they might otherwise neglect. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/1122 Files in this item: 1
Jankie_TEJ_1990.pdf (766.5Kb) -
Kamwendo, G.H. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, September NaN, 2008)[more][less]
Abstract: In 1996, the Ministry of Education in Malawi directed that in future Standards 1 to 4 would be taught through mother tongues. It took eight years before the pilot phase of the language policy could begin. The paper critically analyses this situation using Bamgbose's framework which says that, in Africa, language policies tend to follow one or more of the following patterns: avoidance, vagueness, arbitrariness, fluctuation, and declaration without implementation. The paper explains why the implementation of Malawi's mother tongue instruction policy has been a slow journey on a bumpy road. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/522 Files in this item: 1
Kamwendo_JMMD_2008.pdf (680.5Kb) -
Adeyemi, M. B. (Caddo Gap Press, http://www.caddogap.com, NaN, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: The world is a diverse ecosystem where humans and the environment must interact and live in harmony. In order to keep any society going, either at the national or global level, the importance of having visions for the improvement of that society cannot be overemphasized. It is in the light of this dream of making Botswana an enviable nation that the "Vision 2016" was published in 1997. A pillar of the "Vision" focuses on the development of a moral and tolerant nation. This article presents a brief literature review that focuses on the "moral and tolerant" aspects as aspirations of a nation. These two concepts are values which have implications for classroom pedagogy. This article reports an investigation of 64 teachers at the junior secondary school level and the challenges faced by them when teaching topics related to these values with their attendant remedies. The identified challenges included the difficulty of the use of critical and ethical reasoning methods in classes, a lack of community support, inadequate teachers' qualifications and experience, needed teaching resources, and the heterogeneity of the students, among others. The teachers provide some remedies to these challenges, while the investigator advocates for further research on the appropriate methods for teaching values in schools. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/1098 Files in this item: 1
Adeyemi_ME_2009.pdf (655.4Kb) -
Mafela, L. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, August NaN, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: This study explores the historical relationship between the languages of Basarwa of Botswana and Setswana, in order to understand the dynamics underpinning their appropriation of the Setswana language, as they adjust to their changing livelihoods. The study contributes towards the promotion of a better understanding and awareness of the issues of language shift and language use amongst Basarwa. Basarwa occupy the lowest rungs of the social ladder in Botswana. Due to the close association between the status of the people and the status of their language, the Basarwa languages accordingly rank low in use and status nationally (Andersson & Janson, 2004, p. 118; Batibo, 2005, p. 71). Like the other minority languages, the Basarwa languages also have a low status and a low prestige in education and in written discourse. Moreover, the study observes that in their quest to mediate their socio-economic marginalisation, Basarwa have had to appropriate Setswana, the dominant national language for survival. However, their appropriation of the Setswana Language has had deleterious effects on their languages and overall sociocultural identity. In this context, the nationally dominant Setswana language not only dominates public discourse, but also official spoken discourse as well, while English dominates official written discourse (Andersson&Janson, 1993, pp. 83 84). The sources used to guide this analysis include secondary material, official and unofficial documents, as well as the author’s own observations, as a Motswana and an educationist. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/529 Files in this item: 1
Mafela_IJM_2009.pdf (1.665Mb) -
Code-switching in Botswana history classrooms in the decade of education for sustainable developmentMafela, L. (Routledge http://www.informaworld.com, July NaN, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: Education is an important vehicle for the achievement of overall sustainable development. Moreover, international organisations have encouraged governments around the world to work towards achieving education for all. The notion of inclusive education has been useful in ensuring that country-level educational policies and practices incorporate and serve the interests of learners coming from diverse socio-cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Language facilitation has been earmarked by UNESCO (2005) as a necessary component of education for sustainable development. Despite global affirmation of the importance of language, the absence of language facilitation policies hampers the achievement of education for sustainable development at classroom level. This article explores language use in Botswana's History classrooms in the context of education for sustainable development. It is based on an exploratory study that was undertaken to investigate the use of code-switching in Botswana's History classrooms. The article begins with a discussion of the concept, origins and evolution of sustainable development, and how it links with education for sustainable development. The article goes on to link education for sustainable development with issues of equity and inclusiveness, and explores the role of language in the facilitation of an enabling and interactive teaching and learning environment. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/725 Files in this item: 1
Mafela_LM_2009.pdf (1.531Mb) -
Mafela, L. (Research and Development Unit, University of Botswana http://www.thuto.org, NaN, 1999)[more][less]
Abstract: The dairy industry arose in Bechuanaland primarily as an alternative to beef production in response to South Africa's restrictions on the import of cattle from the Protectorate African dairy producers were at a disadvantage compared to settler farmers due to the lack of government support for the infrastructure essential for highly perishable dairy produce The decline of dairy production in the later colonial period can be attributed to the revival of beef exporting, which undercut the Administration's already limited interest. These events can be situated within the broader pattern of colonial underdevelopment. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/699 Files in this item: 1
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Mafela, L. (Research and Development Unit, University of Botswana. http://www.thuto.org, NaN, 1997)[more][less]
Abstract: In both precolonial and Westerm forms of schooling, education was a crucial medium of construction and articulation of ideas concerning the role and behaviour of women. Precolonial education reproduced and maintained sharp gender differentiation in the division of labour. Socialisation and women's own internalisation of their role and position in society, upheld dominant male ideology and subordination of women. Under colonialism, missionary and colonial education renegotiated but did not fundamentally change the role and position of women. However, it inadvertently also provided women with ways to move out of the household sphere into the wider labour market, albeit as unequal participants. Missionary education strictly separated the sexes and rested on the continued association of women with Victorian notions of 'domesticity'. The concept of ideology is used in this paper to tease out and highlight the gender dynamics which have influenced and directed education among Batswana. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/525 Files in this item: 1
mafela Competing gender ideologies.pdf (794.6Kb) -
Mooko, T. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, March NaN, 2006)[more][less]
Abstract: When Botswana gained independence from the British in 1966, a political decision was taken to designate English as an official language and Setswana, one of the indigenous languages, as a national language. This move disregarded the multilingual nature of Botswana society. Furthermore, although not explicitly stated, the use of other languages was, in effect, prohibited, especially in the school setting and other official arenas. Whereas the government undertook deliberate measures to promote the use of Setswana, no efforts were made by the government to cater for other languages spoken in Botswana. As a result, some of the latter languages have died out whilst others have survived. This paper examines some of the steps that members of the groups that speak these marginalised languages have taken in their quest to develop and maintain their languages. The discussion in this paper considers the six strategies proposed by David Crystal (2000) as some of the ways that speakers of endangered languages could ensure their survival. Deprived of any government support, the speakers of these languages initiated some processes that have seen some significant developments. These include the development of orthographies, the translation of the Bible into these languages and the publication of other written resources in these languages. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/602 Files in this item: 1
Mooko_JMMD_2006.pdf (1.181Mb) -
Jotia, A.L. (IJSRE, http://www.ijsre.com, October NaN, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: This paper registers that there is a strong relationship between the prevailing global discourse on Education for Sustainable Development and Democracy in Education. As such, in order for any nation to be seen to be having a relevant and quality education, its education system should be seen to be addressing the principles of democracy in a more direct and robust way. The role of education in advancing the global dream of sustainable development-which of late is also being marshalled by Environmental Education, cannot be overemphasized. However, the paper contends that unless we begin to democratize education to give learners a voice and a sense of being partners and key stakeholders in the process of educating and or advancing the state’s socio-economic and political aspirations, the objectives of having sustainable development will remain an absolute nightmare. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/977 Files in this item: 1
Jotia_IJSRE_2010.pdf (1.559Mb) -
Kamwendo, G. (Taylor & Francis, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals, December NaN, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: Malawi's Vision 2020 document, a national document that serves as a vehicle to project a future for a more developed, secure and democratically mature nation, laments the tendency of Malawians to denigrade local products and glorify all things foreign. Yet, paradoxically, the document does not address the important issue of promoting Malawi's indegenous languages. This silence can be interpreted as reflective of the population's inclination to ascribe greater value to forign culture. In Malawi, as in many other African countries, indigenous languages are not considered worthy as media of education, subjects of advanced study or critical vehicles for national development. They are still victim to a discrimination rooted in Africa's 500 plus years of European enslavement and colonialisation. Against the backdrop of the pursuit of an African Renaissance, this article looks at Malawi's language policies since independence in 1964, and at how, ten years short of an idyllic national vision, Malawi measures up on the important issue of language. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/1041 Files in this item: 1
Kamwendo_IJARS_2010.pdf (1.393Mb) -
Ketlhoilwe, M.P. (IJSRE, http://www.ijsre.com, December NaN, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: The implementation of education for sustainable development (ESD) demand for a review of the current epistemological and pedagogical practices in the context of the objectives of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD). Most of higher education institutions are grappling with the introduction of education for sustainable development into the curriculum. The paper is interrogating possible epistemological and pedagogical practices for higher education institutions in Southern Africa. It draws on reports from Southern Africa Higher Education Institutions. The paper highlights on themes and topics that may be of interest, most useful and suitable for teaching education for sustainable development in contributing to the implementation of UNDESD at higher education institutions. It explores social, economic, political and ecological issues, local contexts and impact. The paper stimulates and invites debates on sustainability issues and their implication for research, community engagement and teaching and learning practices at higher education institutions and curriculum policy change to promote social transformation. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/803 Files in this item: 1
Ketlhoilwe_IJSRE_2010.pdf (1.758Mb) -
Tabulawa, R.T. (Routledge http://www.informaworld.com, February NaN, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: Literature on globalisation claims that changed global patterns of production and industrial organisation have intensified international economic competition, prompting nations globally to restructure their education systems in an attempt to position themselves favourably in an increasingly competitive economic environment. This is an environment that now requires a new kind of worker, what Castells terms the self-programmable worker. This has put education under pressure to produce the learner-equivalent of the self-programmable worker. This self-programmable learner is characterised by such psychosocial traits as independence of thought, innovativeness, creativity and flexibility. Botswana's Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE) of 1994 represents the country's response to globalisation. It purports to produce the self-programmable learner for an economy undergoing rapid transformation. In this paper I take a critical view of the policy's intent. By analysing two of its central constructs (pre-vocational preparation strategy and the behaviourist model adopted in the review of the curriculum), upon which the production of the self-programmable learner hinges, I conclude that it is unlikely that the preferred learner would be produced. The two constructs are identified as paradoxes in that their effects are most likely to be the opposite of what is intended. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/733 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_CE_2009.pdf (2.061Mb) -
Tabulawa, R. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, June NaN, 2002)[more][less]
Abstract: Curriculum reviews during the past two decades in Botswana have had mixed fortunes for geography in secondary schools. While the subject has modernised over the years it has at the same time shrunk in terms of its spread over the entire secondary schooling period. This paper describes this contradictory development, teasing out some of the most salient forces that have shaped the geography curriculum in secondary schools in Botswana. It argues that the subject's future is precarious and uncertain. Deliberate and concerted effort to promote and 'sell' the subject is required of those with vested interests in it. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/515 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_IRGEE_2002.pdf (1.042Mb) -
Tabulawa, R.T. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, January NaN, 2004)[more][less]
Abstract: This study reports on the strategies (overt and subtle) employed by students in one senior secondary school in Botswana to keep their teachers in an information-giving position. Contrary to the prevailing view that the 'teacher dominance' of classroom activities so often reported in classroom studies results from teachers' desire for social control, this study sees the dominance as a negotiated product, resulting instead from teachers and students exercising power on one another. Such a view of classroom practice is only possible where power is conceptualized not as a negative force that dominates, but as a productive force that simultaneously constrains and enables human action. Viewed this way, classroom reality becomes a co-construction, a 'joint project' by teacher and students. Attempts to change this reality, therefore, must include both teacher and students. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/516 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_JCS_2004.pdf (1.362Mb) -
Tabulawa, R. (Springer. http://www.springerlink.com, April NaN, 2007)[more][less]
Abstract: The University of Botswana has not escaped the reform fever currently gripping higher education institutions the world-over. In the late 1980s the University initiated an administrative/management restructuring exercise whose resultant structure was implemented between 1998 and 2000. The exercise, in many respects, was a response to globalization. The emergence, in the past two decades, of a global economy, the massification of higher education, and the globalization of neo-liberal economic thinking have compelled universities to recast their social and economic missions. Consequently, universities have had to restructure within the framework of a global ideology characterized by an emphasis on effectiveness, quality and efficiency. This paper explicates the restructuring exercise at the University of Botswana by locating the exercise within its global and local contexts. It argues that while the resultant structure reflected global influences and trends, it was as much a product of local concerns. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/511 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_HE_2007.pdf (2.309Mb) -
Kamwendo, G.H. (Brill Academic Publishers. http://www.brill.nl/m%5Fcatalogue.asp?sub=3, NaN, 2008)[more][less]
Abstract: In a linguistically heterogeneous country, one of the critical challenges is to make information accessible to all people. Various communication media can be used: television, radio, telephone, the Internet and others. Malawi needs to embrace Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in order to achieve development in all spheres of human life. Malawi’s use of ICTs ranks low. Th e critical challenge, therefore, is to promote an increased use of ICTs with the aim of improving people’s access to information. Given that only a minority of Malawians have access to ICTs, that television has not signifi cantly penetrated into rural areas where 80 % of the population lives, and that there is also a high illiteracy rate, the radio becomes the most accessible form of technology for information dissemination in Malawi. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/530 Files in this item: 1
Kamwendo_PGDT_2008.pdf (590.8Kb) -
Tabulawa, R. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, February NaN, 2003)[more][less]
Abstract: Recent pronouncements by international aid agencies on their interest in and preference for a learner-centred pedagogy so far appear not to have attracted much scholarly attention. This paper attempts to explain this interest. It argues that although the efficacy of the pedagogy is often couched in cognitive/educational terms, in essence, its efficacy lies in its political and ideological nature. The fact that the aid agencies’ interest in the pedagogy became explicit soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall is in itself significant. The paper argues that aid agencies’ apparent lack of interest in pedagogical issues before 1989 lay partially in the very central hypothesis of the modernisation theory of development which became enshrined in policies of aid agencies soon after the latter were created. The hypothesis, coupled with human capital theory, viewed education in technicist terms. However, the ascendancy of neo-liberalism as a development paradigm in the 1980s and 1990s elevated political democratisation as a prerequisite for economic development. Education, then, assumed a central role in the democratisation project. Given its democratic tendencies, learner-centred pedagogy was a natural choice for the development of democratic social relations in the schools of aid-receiving countries. Aid agencies, therefore, had to be explicit about their preference for the pedagogy. Thus, the pedagogy is an ideological outlook, a worldview intended to develop a preferred kind of society and people. It is in this sense that it should be seen as representing a process of Westernisation disguised as quality and effective teaching. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/518 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_CE_2003.pdf (1.336Mb) -
Adeyemi, M.B. (Taylor & Francis, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals, July NaN, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: This paper identifies the aims and contents directly linked to the teaching and learning of the concept of democracy at the junior secondary school level in Botswana. It examines the perceived extent to which the objectives of teaching the concept of democracy has been achieved by 72 social studies teachers, in addition to finding out the perceived challenges they face and their suggested solutions while teaching topics related to democracy. It was found that the majority of the social studies teachers believe that the level of the achievement of the teaching of the aims is either average or above average. The problems of defining the concept of democracy and the handling of mixed ability students were identiified as major challenges to the teaching of the concept of democracy in social studies. The study found a moderate but positive correlation between the self-assessment of 36 purposively selected subjects from the 72 social studies teachers and the observed attributes on some traits on democracy while teaching a topic on democracy. A correlated t-test further indicates a significant difference between the ratings of the teachers and those of the investigator. It was concluded that a gap exists between theory (what teachers perceive as practicing) and practice (what they actually do in the classrooms). URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/1044 Files in this item: 1
Adeyemi_ES_2002.pdf (1.951Mb) -
Kamwendo, G.H.; Mooko, T. (Walter de Gruyter, http://www.degruyter.de, November NaN, 2006)[more][less]
Abstract: The article discusses language planning in two Southern African countries, Botswana and Malawi. Both countries are multilingual and multicultural. They also share a common British colonial history. At independence, the two countries retained English as the official language. In Botswana, Setswana was made the national language while in Malawi, it was Chichewa. Over the years, these languages have been developed and promoted at the expense of other indigenous languages, a situation that has prompted linguistic minorities to engage in the language-based politics of recognition. The article discusses how Botswana and Malawi are responding to the call for the official recognition of more indigenous languages in domains such as government, education, and mass media. Relevant comparisons and contrasts between Botswana and Malawi are drawn in this regard in the article. One clear common denominator is the dominance of English in official domains in the two countries. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/829 Files in this item: 1
Kamwendo_IJSL_2006.pdf (1.340Mb) -
Kamwendo, G.H. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, August NaN, 2008)[more][less]
Abstract: According to the Medical Council of Malawi, one of the conditions for a licence to be granted to an individual who wants to practise medicine in Malawi is the practitioner's ability to speak and write English fluently. This means that the expatriate medical practitioner is not required by law to demonstrate fluency in Chichewa (the national language) or any other relevant indigenous language(s). On the basis of a sociolinguistic study that was conducted at a major referral hospital in a predominantly Chitumbuka-speaking town, this paper argues that the Medical Council of Malawi erroneously assumes that English is the main language of doctor-patient communication in Malawian hospitals since the country is linguistically categorised as an English speaking African country. Yet only a minority of the population is competent in English. The national language (Chichewa), and other indigenous languages remain the main medium through which much of the health service provider-patient communication takes place. A more realistic and comprehensive language proficiency testing should cover English (the main international language of medicine) and at least one indigenous language (the lingua franca of the area in which a particular hospital is located). URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/540 Files in this item: 1
Kamwendo_CILP_2008.pdf (633.9Kb)
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